South African SMEs miss benefits of online payment offerings - study

The SMEs are unaware of modern online payment offerings offering lower costs and higher levels of business automation, according to a study issued by Curiosity Box on behalf of payments gateway, Sage Pay, which suggests 31 percent of SMEs are not aware that there are alternative payment providers, makambaonline.com reports.

Moreover, most SMEs are not thinking about the opportunity of streamlining their payment environment. Managing Director of Sage Pay, Charles Pittaway, said as a result, these were losing out on significant time and cost savings.

The result of a lack of awareness, he said, was that companies were frustrated by high payment costs, low levels of automation, making payments time-consuming and prone to human error, and a lack of customisation in their payments solutions.

Pittaway said SMEs should thus explore alternatives that made it safe and simple to capture details for recurring and once-off payments directly on one system which was accessible anywhere at any time.